Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates has just joined Twitter with a verified account, having been preceded by numerous fakes. Just to confirm it, he used the programmer’s standard: “Hello World”.
Gates tweeted that he was working on his letter for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and tweeted Ryan Seacrest to say “thanks for your wok on this, it will have a real impact for the people in Haiti who need it most.”
In about four hours, Gates picked up more than 25 000 followers and was added to more than a thousand lists and now it’s something like 1 000 per minute. A colleague commented: “he’s pulling people in at an astonishing rate. It’s like watching a black hole in action”.
Whether he’ll outdo Oprah or Britney remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely.
Gates is following 40 accounts including Microsoft, GatesFoundation, Bing, The Economist, The Huffington Post, Queen Rania, Cern, eBay-founder Pierre Omidyar, several TED accounts and Ashley Tisdale. No doubt Bill will thrill to Ashley tweets such as “Gettin my nails done with nessa!!!!” and “went grocery shopping and now cleaning the house!!!!”. – guardian.co.uk